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.RobinGwynn cites the telling (albeit post-Revolution and highly biased) commentary ofMichael Malard describing the Savoy as an amphibious church , a monstruouscomposition of an Episcopal face and a Presbyterian heart.44 In doing so, Malardimitates the standard style of seventeenth-century heresiographers whose favouriteimage to describe the spread of sects in England was that of an unnatural assemblageof eclectic, unrelated but equally heretical religious models.Bernard Cottret reiteratesthis contemporary observation when discussing the hybrid Savoy Church.45 Thisis where mentalité historians such as Ruth Whelan or Bernard Cottret make aninvaluable contribution to our understanding of the motives behind the decision toconform.After an analysis of the political and religious motives put forward byexponents of conformity such as Louis Hérault and Claude Groteste de la Mothe,Cottret turns towards the concept of acculturation and analyses, with the scantdocuments we possess, how the French conformists could twist the Anglican liturgyto serve their needs and avoid the most offensive elements for a French religioussensibility; in a word, how the conformity of the French is simply another version ofthe occasional conformity practised among English non-conformists, the foreignersappropriating only selected elements of the Anglican ritual.46The historical debate is therefore far from closed on the question of resistance,acceptance or selective acceptance of the English religious model by the Huguenots,and the possible alliances and sympathies this could add to the Restoration religiousscene.We can approach the French community from many different angles:accepting Anglicanism; resisting Anglicanism but distancing itself from Englishnon-conformity on account of its legal right to worship; resisting Anglicanism43 Bold sig.A2r and p.23.For a detailed study of this text, contrasted with anothersermon by George Hickes, see Mark Goldie, The Huguenot Experience and the Problem ofToleration in Restoration England , in Caldicott et al., The Huguenots in Ireland, pp.184 8and Spurr, p.83.44 Quoted in Gwynn, Heritage, p.126.For the reaction of James towards the Savoy simperfect conformity (what Bernard Cottret has termed its syncretism ) see pp.172 3.Jamesobjected, among other things, to the weaknesses of the French translation of the Anglicanliturgy.For the different reactions of Henry Compton, Bishop of London and WilliamSancroft, Archbishop of Canterbury, to the supposed liberties the Huguenots were taking withthe Anglican liturgy, see Sugiko Nishikawa, Henry Compton, Bishop of London (1676 1713)and Foreign Protestants , in Vigne and Littleton, Strangers, pp.359 65.45 Cottret, Terre d exil, p.220.46 Ibid., pp.212 25. 14 Religious Culture of the Huguenotsbecause of affinities with a Presbyterian system; resisting Anglicanism with surfaceconformity.All these patterns correspond to circumstances that can be glimpsedat different times, in different communities and with different individuals, and thearticles below seek to map out this diversity rather than to suggest a single model ofexplanation.There are, for instance, many examples, albeit sometimes purely incidental, ofrapprochements between the Huguenots and the English non-conformists, and theseoffer many directions for future research.Robin Gwynn has stories of Huguenotsturning Quakers, but also Methodists and Independents, or even forming their ownnon-conformist sect, as with David Culy and the Culimites in the Fens.In Dublin,there was at least one instance of Huguenots being enticed to join English-speakingconventicles, and, conversely, on 12 November 1683, James Mellish, the Mayor ofSouthampton, complained to Bishop Morley that English non-conformists were infact taking refuge in the French church.47 Ruth Whelan, when analysing resistanceto Anglicanism, has observed among the Irish Huguenots a theology and a religiousculture which converged in significant ways with the religious sensibilities of thePresbyterians
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